Trains & Kazantip!

Day 16
After first going to another big SPA in Budapest, we made ourselves ready to go to the Sziget festival. We had a shower and walked towards the river where we were getting a boat to Sziget. Another Dutch guy from Rotterdam joined us too to the festival.
The boat ride took a little longer than we had hoped for, but once we got to the festival all was fine as we entered through a very quiet entrance. From there we bought a pass to buy drinks with and off we went.
We checked out the performance of Go Back to the Zoo. A Dutch band which attracted a lot of Dutch people obviously. After the performance we checked out the White Lies at the main stage which was pretty good too. From there we walked around the festival and hung around anywhere where it sounded good. Later in the night the party changed into more of a clubbing night with a crazy performance by some Dutch dj who asked everyone to bring anything crazy to the area. Result: everyone grabbed trees, bushes, signs, whatever they could find and brought it all into the large tent where the dj was performing. We stayed at Sziget till the end which was till about 6 in the morning. From there we grabbed a bus back to the city. Once we got to the hostel we had a few good hours of sleep.

Day 17
After some must needed sleep we woke up, had a shower and checked out of the hostel. We relaxed a little bit in the hostel and in the park. Maria told me she had problems with her ATM card, which made her stay at the hostel for an extra day. At the end of the afternoon Luc, me and Cliff grabbed the subway to the train station for our extreme long train ride to the Ukraine.
Once at the train station we went to the local supermarket to buy as much food as possible, as we would be in trains for the next 40 hours. We bought bread, muesli, milk, chips, wodca, cola, water… two big bags full of food. Afterwards we bought with our last Hungarian money a big bucket at Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner. With all of our bags we headed back to the train station to our Russian train to the Ukraine.
The train left quite on time. It turned out to be quite comfortable too, as we had our own compartment among the three of us with beds and everything.
The train ride took about 25 hours. That gave us about 2 hours to catch our next train to the far south of the Ukraine: Krim island.
Even though it wasn’t easy to buy a train ticket for Cliff without knowing any of the language; we made it with a lot of help from fellow passengers who were waiting in line. We drank a beer at the station and grabbed our next train. This next train we had to share our compartment with two men from the Ukraine. Cliff sat in another part of the train because he bought his ticket only a few hours before.
The train ride turned out to be a lot of fun, as one of the men in our compatment was very chatty and spoke a bit of English. He bought a bottle of Wodca from the ticket guy, but secretly, as the train personel isn’t allowed to sell wodca to passengers. There we saw the first signs of corruption sticking around the corner already.
The rest of the train ride we drank a lot of wodca with Luc in the end passing out on the bed of the compartment. The next morning we arrived safe and sound in Simferopol.

Day 18
Once we got out of the train a guy was holding a sign with my name on it. It was our ride we had arranged through Kazantip. He was taking us to the town where the festival is being held. Cliff was of course not invited and with some hasseling with the taxi driver (and paying an additional 15 euro) could come along too.
The ride took over 2 hours, a little bit longer than I at first had expected. The town we finally got to seemed really quiet and poor, with not even paved roads, but home to one of the biggest festivals in Eastern Europe.
We entered our room which already included two other guys from Holland. They had arrived a day before already.
Cliff made a deal with the hotel owner by telling him he was a firefighter. The owner thought that was really cool and gave him his own room for 20 euro’s a night. We were shocked when we heard about it, as we had payed 300 euro’s for only 5 days AND we had to share that room with two other people.
We had a shower and went to buy our Kazantip ViZa-tickets. The festival was about 15 minutes walking from our accomodation. 
Once at the entrance there was a little queue with people waiting to buy their entree tickets. A military guy was regulating who was allowed to enter the building where the tickets were being sold. He was stern, even getting money from the ATM in the building seemed to be a problem. 
The tickets for Kazantip were 200 euro’s per person, a bit more expensive than we thought. Luc found out he was out of money, so I had to pay for him too. To buy the ticket we had to show our passport and a photo was taken of us too. At the entrance of the festival you have to scan your ticket. The photo they took was being shown on a screen for the security to check it was really my own ticket.
Once we entered we explored the festival area. The area turned out fairly big with a lot of tents and bars all. over the beach. People were relaxing on the beach while others were dancing in one of the many bars.
We chilled out on the beach for a while. When the sun was about to set we went back to our hotel. There we had some food at the hotel next door which was recommended by the hotel owner.
After dinner we freshed up, ate a watermelon filled with wodca and we drank some beers. Afterwards we went back to the festival. The two Dutch guys in our room came along too. We had a beer and walked around the festival. By night the festival seemed really alive with lots of people dancing and drinking.
It turned out we had to pay for the toilets which we didn’t feel like doing. We walked a bit to the end of the festival and we had a pee in the bushes. Out of nowhere about 6 military guys surrounded us and told us to give our ViZa’s (the festival tickets). They took the tickets and they told us to come with them. They guided us back to the entree gate and kicked us out. We asked them what the hell was going on, especially as they had taken our ViZa’s.
One of the military guys spoke a bit of English and told us to come with him. He walked us to the ticket office and told us we had to pay a fine of 300 Hryvna (30 euro). We told him that was bullshit, as we had no idea we would be fined for peeing in the bush. I told him they should have informed us about these rules somehow.
As we didn’t have enough money left, we had to go back to our hotel to get more money to pay the fine so we would get our ViZa’s back. We were quite pissed off about this situation. The hotel owner found us angry back at the hotel. He told us this was indeed a weird thing, as KaZanTip is known for its free and open character.
Once back at the ticket office we payed the fine and we got our ticket back. We entered back into the festival and were ready to party again.
Later on we found more people being kicked out by the military. Taking photos of the military was forbidden too. Slowly we felt like this open and freedom festival was more like some communist state. Forbidden to take photos of people?? On top of that the military was very stern and there seemed to be hundreds of them.
A German television crew was interviewing one of the dj’s at the festival. I walked up to them to see them at work. Soon enough the producer asked us where we were from and whether we wanted to be interviewed. We agreed and the German girl interviewed us about the festival. Still a bit pissed off we told her the festival seemed to have some communist characteristics. I am not sure whether the girl was looking for these answers, so I am not sure whether they actually used the interview.
We partied until the early morning. Around 8 am I walked back home. On the way I bought a nice pizza, which became my standard ritual for the days to come. The pizza’s were quite good, as the baker was an Italian guy from Verona.

Day 19
Most of the day we slept. We woke up around 16:00 and had a shower. We went over to the festival and chilled out on the beach. Around 20:00 the sun set, which includes some sort of ritual in Kazantip. A guy with a big stick was hitting a gong. People were cheeting and taking photos. This phenomon that happens every day, seemed to amaze the big crowds of people.
After the sun had set we walked back to the hotel. We were planning to cook something our selves, but the hotel owner encouraged us to go the neighbour next door to have a meal at their place. As the meal was only 5 euro’s, we decided to go there anyway instead of heading to the shop to cook ourselves.
He also told us he had spoken to the management of Kazantip about the incident of the night before. Apparently we were lucky we only payed a 30 euro fine to get our ticket back, as a Russian guy had done the same, but had ot buy a whole new ViZa for 200 euro’s again. He told the management of Kazantip that this was all a bit ridicilous and how he didn’t want angry customers in his hotel. The management of Kazantip arrogantly told him that if we were causing problems in his hotel to not go to the police, but go to them instead. They told him they could then send us out of the town back to Kiev. The hotel owner told them this was not what he wanted, but it did show how much influence the management of Kazantip likes to have. It seemed like they were trying to be their own state with their own rules and government. Thankfully this is not the case.
After dinner we went to the shop to buy some water, beer and wodca. Wodca turned out to be really cheap. A 1L bottle of wodca costed about 60 Hryvna (6 euro). We also bought some energy drink and orange juice to mix it with. Buying all that was not all that easy, as nobody speaks English. We had to point at everything we wanted, so the woman could grab it for us.
We had a few drinks in our room and afterwards we headed back to the festival. The festival was a bit busier than the night before, basically because more people were coming in for the end party which was 2 days away. We partied the night away and got back to the hotel around 9am, again of course after eating my pizza like I did the day before.

Day 20
After sleeping in we woke up around 18:00. We all felt quite horrible. We drank some water and got out of bed. From there we had a shower, went to the neighbour for some dinner. Afterwards we went over to the shop to buy some beer and wodca again.
This time we decided to not drink so much before going to the festival, which seemed a good idea. The hotel owner was happy to see we were still sober once we left the hotel to go to the festival. This time around the main stage was open where loads of people had gathered to watch the dj’s spin their wheels of steel.
Cliff found a Russian girl he had hooked up with the night before and went off dancing with her. We danced the night away together with the two other Dutch guys of our room. We partied till the early morning. We saw the sun coming up again, but we kept on partying. Meanwhile we made friends with a few Russian guys who were dancing too. They were sharing their bottle of Champagne, which got us even more drunk. Around 9am we decided to call it the day and went back to sleep.

Day 21
The final day at Kazantip we woke up around 14:00. Cliff came in to say bye to us, as he was leaving for Kiev a day earlier than us. We said bye to him and told him to meet us in the hostel in Kiev in 2 days. After Cliff left we had our same ritual again of having dinner at the neighbour and drinking some beers in the room with two other Dutch guys.
This final night was quite similar to the night before. The main stage was booming and the crowds were going crazy. At the main stage we met a few other Dutch guys from Amsterdam. For a few hours we hang out with them.
Afterwards we headed to another area and partied some more. When the morning came we headed back to our hotel to catch some sleep. We had to set our alarm to about 15:00 as a taxi was going to pick us up around 16:00 which would take us to the train station.

Aug 14th 2011 – Aug 21st 2011